***
In the darkened room Rashid had been looking through the scope as the lightening broke across the sky, a sheet of electric white light that was still making itself heard with the loudest thunder he had ever heard. He had lost his night vision, the images he had been looking at now burned onto his retinas. The lightening had been directly overhead, the thunder sounding like a Howitzer shell landing on top of them. And then had come the mortar round. Quieter in comparison to nature’s wrath, but almost certainly deadlier. The explosion shook the floor beneath his feet, rocked him and made his internal organs feel like they had been turned to liquid. He realised that he had not been breathing and took a grateful intake of breath.
But he had seen something significant. In that flash of fury from the storm, he had seen deep into the forest and could make out a clearing beyond the fringe of trees. He kept the rifle aimed, closed his eyes as he recaptured the moment. How tall did the figure appear in his scope? Two inches? Crouched. Almost certainly over the mortar tube which had just unleased hell down upon them. He opened his eyes, mentally calculating. The rifle scope was a 4x40 with no aperture adjustment. So, four times magnification and 40mm objective lens. About average in terms of light admittance through the lens. Through the sight at two-hundred and forty metres, the man he had shot whilst lying down at the summit of the hill had filled the lens. Rashid calculated the size difference from laying to crouching as a factor of two-point-five. Which put the figure he had seen at the wrong end of five-hundred metres. He calculated the arc of fire, this time elevated to a firing position of approximately sixty-feet. And then there was the head wind. Which although wouldn’t deviate the yaw of the bullet, would slow it considerably. Rashid estimated a two-feet of elevation. He settled into the stock of the rifle and waited.
“Have you got a target?” Caroline asked from the doorway. She peered around the jamb, the pistol held in her right hand.
Rashid didn’t move a muscle. He was breathing steadily, half-filling his lungs, to keep the rifle true. He didn’t answer.
“Well, has he?” Ramsay asked over Caroline’s shoulder. He looked on, glanced at Caroline and flinched as the night was turned to day.
The room was as bright as if someone had turned on the light. The great sheet of lighting filled the sky and Rashid moved the rifle just once before he fired. The rumble of thunder was instant, almost suppressing the sound of the gunshot. The light dimmed, then flashed brighter for two more seconds before the room switched back to darkness and Rashid slowly stood up and picked up the rifle.
“Not anymore,” he said quietly. “Not anymore.”
***
King moved up on the maintenance huts. He could see a dull glow of light from within, shining under the door. The huts looked like two converted shipping containers that had been welded together. There was only one door, cut into the side of the structure, but it was a double affair which King assumed allowed for large items of equipment to be stored.
The huts lay in the lee of the hotel which afforded some shelter, but the spiralling wind was still blustering at fifty-miles-per-hour and it was an effort for King to remain steady on his feet. The blustering effect made walking difficult because of the start-stop effect, causing King to overcompensate when the wind dropped. By the time he corrected his stride, the wind blew him off balance again. King reached the hut and studied the door. The vertical bolts of the shipping container had been replaced with a regular pull-down door handle, and King tested it as gently as he could. The door gave, and the wind did the rest, blowing it wide open. King went with it, ducked inside and moved to his left for no other reason than the open door blocked his movement to his right.
The hut was an Aladdin’s cave of equipment, past and present maintenance projects and tools. King couldn’t see anybody, but he could see where they had been. A prima-stove and dirty coffee cups were scattered on a workbench and there was the aroma of coffee on the air. King closed the door behind him and started around the hut, picking his way through and around the equipment. Two snowmobiles were in pieces, tools and parts left on the floor. King picked his way around them, side-stepped a broken wardrobe and that’s when everything went blank. He was aware of falling, his ears ringing and a flash of white behind his eyes. He landed heavily amongst the tools and parts, felt a searing pain to the back of his head, followed by a groggy numbness. He fought unconsciousness, his inner voice screaming at him to fight. He felt someone step on his foot, and he rolled onto his back in time to see Huss coming at him with a wrench raised above his head. King kicked out with his other foot and caught the man in his groin. Huss wasn’t used to pain, and he did not take it well. He grimaced and halted his attack, which gave King enough time to kick out again, harder this time and to the side of the man’s kneecap. Pain was a fickle emotion, and inflicting it was a science. The man’s
